The War Above the Clouds
by Lord Duro
Summary: Hardcore fans will really enjoy this, but not necessary to enjoy. Kind of a new take on Pokemon, edgy, funny, not so Poke-centric in the way that the whole world doesn't focus solely on Pokemon as it does in the games. The son of an Elite Four member and a Pokemon Ranger grows up to be a dual Trainer/Ranger and is put to the test when war breaks out across the regions. Please R&R!
1. Before: The Early Days

You could say my family has a complicated history when it comes to Pokémon.

No, no one's been harmed in the way that sentence immediately implies. I think that would have been easier, actually, if we had renounced Pokémon altogether

Good thing mine are tucked away in their balls right now, otherwise I'd catch serious flack for that.

Allow me to explain the sichee-ashon we got here.

My father is a member of the Sinnoh region's Elite Four. His name is Flint, you have heard of him. He is sort of a fire-type expert, and got help you if you get him talking on the subject. What is that subject? Oh, that fire-types are the most powerful types, and how we wouldn't be able to live without them, how _vital _they are to our poke-ecosystem.

Anyway. He's a hothead, to put it shortly. And his name is Flint. Don't get me started on the unfortunate irony of _that _situation. Like he was destined from birth to become that man he is today, yeesh.

Well, about twenty years ago, my father met my mother in the Fiore region while he was still a gym leader on the search for more fire Pokémon.

The thing about my mother: She's a Pokémon Ranger. Now in the Fiore, Almia, and Oblivia regions, Pokemon Rangers do not capture Pokemon. In fact, no one does. Pokemon in those regions are revered more as pets and friends than tools for battle and allies like they are in Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and even over in distant Unova which is even farther than Almia.

So drastic are the cultures and mindsets, made all the more palpable by the two-thousand some-odd kilometers in between each set of regions, that contact has all but been cut off.

My father's arrival twenty years ago was met with some trepidation and in rare cases hostility. Now it's just hostility when a Trainer from the Main Regions visits the outlying ones. The Island Regions call Trainers slave drivers and masters of the Pokemon rather than friends and allies.

The phrase "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" doesn't promote a warm, we're all one big happy family feeling does it?

This, of course, doesn't go over well with Trainers and more than one fight has broken out over the differences in opinion.

Now ambassadors from the Islands have indeed changed the Main Regions government and Leagues' stance on Pokemon training, it's now strongly recommended that Pokemon being held in computer should be released after two weeks or so, so relations have gotten better in the past couple years between the two sets of regions.

You can imagine how this left me in an awkward position when I was born three years after my parents met. They were—are—very much in love, and they didn't look forward to having to make me choose which route I wanted to take when I got older.

Because clearly, I'd have to choose one. With my father being an Elite Four member by the time I was born and my mother a respected Ranger Base leader, my options were limited to two fields: Trainer or Ranger. I almost gave the both of them a stroke when I jestingly toyed with the idea of being a breeder or researcher, but from the get-go they told me they would respect my decision no matter what.

So I became both.

E-gad! Both, you say, nameless, yet handsome narrator? Yes, both, I say!

In the Main Regions and Unova, we also have Pokemon Rangers, who have the same mindset of the Outlying Regions' Rangers—protect wildlife, keep Pokemon safe—but they just catch the Pokemon they encounter in a ball.

It seemed like an easy way out. But my mother informed me that I'd be given a Capture Styler if I wanted to "be a true Ranger."

So I became a trainer when I was ten. This seemed acceptable to my parents, who asked me to spend an amount of team in both fields I wished to go in to. So following Main Region tradition, I got my starter Pokemon the day I turned ten.

Let me clear up a few things. If it hasn't been made clear by now, yes, my mother moved with my father to Sinnoh to raise me. She takes weekly trips to the Outlying Regions though, to keep up with her duties that she refused to give up. The only week she's missed since marrying my father was the week she gave birth to me. Calling her determined would be like pointing out the flame on a Charmander's tail.

So let me say this: In an act of complete rebellion against my ass of a father—I love him dearly, don't get me wrong, but he can be rather ass-ish—I refused to get a Fire starter.

This, as you can imagine, boiled his blood. Har har.

I was adamant, though, and his tantrum only fueled my desire to have something other than a fire-type. "You said you're support me," my surprisingly mature, yet stubborn—wonder who I got that from—ten-year-old self argued. My mother agreed with me, and together we doused Forest Fire Flint.

I couldn't very well get a grass-type—nay, not something he could easily _beat_. So I went with the obvious choice: water.

And thus, Piplup became my very first Pokemon. Now I had the option of any starter of any of the Main Regions given my father's status, but his very first Pokemon had been Chimchar. Like, how do I _not _chose Piplup?

My father forbade me from catching anymore Pokemon for the first couple months I had Pip, something that didn't fly with me at first. He imparted on me the only advice about raising Pokemon I really listened to: "Spend time and get to know each one, Ford, because you will trust them and they will trust you. In battle, and in the rest of your life, this is something that cannot be stressed enough."

Pip and I became close. And when the time came for my father to give me my first PokeBall, he grabbed my shoulder before I could sprint out the door with it and to the nearest route.

"No son of mine is going to be limited to the options of a single region. Those professors are always talking about this great big world of Pokemon, then expect you to catch only those in your region. Well, hell, son, get in the jet." The perks of being an Elite Four kid.

So he took me on his plane and we flew to Kanto, where I caught my Pidgey, who I nicknamed Pudge because he wasn't the slimmest of Pidgeys.

From there we went to Fiore where I would stay with my mother for a month. She taught me the importance of being friendly with Pokemon and really driving the point that they are more than tools _or _pets home to me. It's this dual background of Trainer and Ranger that I think has given me an edge in my life, both Pokemon-related and non. My father picked me up a month later, and I said good-bye to all my new friends I had made at Fiore.

My father took me next to Hoenn, where I fell in love with the region. It was so different from Johto, Kanto, and my home region of Sinnoh. It was fresh and new and exciting and right then and there I vowed to myself that I would one day move there when I was a big hotshot dual Trainer/Ranger.

My father dropped me off at the airport and said he'd come back in a week. In that time, I was given a hotel and food card that would provide shelter in my quest to catch the best of the best in Hoenn.

It was in battling my Wailmer that Pip evolved into a Prinplup, and I'm not too proud to say that I cried when the event occurred.

A lonely thing it is, traveling by yourself in a strange region. But I think it built character. I was forced not only to rely on myself and my Pokemon, but also the kindness of strangers in town. I got caught up on the local and regional gossip, even got to meet the Hoenn Champion. I made a name for myself in Hoenn. I wasn't just "Flint's son" as I had been in Sinnoh. I was becoming my own man and I wasn't even eleven years old yet. I did a lot of growing up in a short period of time.

I didn't plan on catching two Pokemon in Hoenn, not so close to one another. I wanted to get to know my Wailmer before catching another Pokemon.

As it happens, Seviper didn't share my sentiment as he sprang from the grass, razor-sharp tail glowing a sickly purple with the Poison Tail move. I barely managed to throw myself back in time and I found myself desperately wishing for a Capture Styler.

I could calm the wild Seviper down that way as I had obviously strayed into its territory. The poor thing was probably mad with paranoia as I was in obvious Zangoose territory, a fact that immediately caught my interest. Why would a Zeviper set up shop here? It clearly had a chip on its shoulder. Everyone knew Zangoose and Seviper are bitter, bitter enemies. I guess my Seviper had had enough of the pounding.

Of course, he had yet to be _my _Seviper as I got to my feet and we squared off. An angry serpent Pokemon is a scary sight to behold if you're on the wrong end of its happy meter.

In a flash, we moved. My hand went to my belt and his muscles uncoiled in a spring that carried him ten feet to me.

I rolled aside and threw the first ball my hand touched. Which, was Wailmer, who doesn't operate all that well outsie of water.

Damned if my Wailmer isn't the most optimistic of creatures you'll ever meet in your whole damn life, though. He happily showered Seviper with a lovely Hydro Pump than knocked the serpent back into the tree with a dull _thud. _I returned Wailmer to his ball before he could get dehydrated.

Seviper's long, muscular body was coiled in a heap at the base of the tree as I began to turn my back on it, shaken but ready to continue on my merry way.

I stopped, though, when I saw a pair of Zangoose eyes in the brush to my right. And my left. And I realized that the instant I left, they would pounce on the defenseless Seviper and tear it to shreds.

Dropping my pack on the ground beside me, I turned back to Seviper. "I'm doing this not to save you from the Zangoose, but because I think you're strong." My words were met with heavy silence as its reptilian body rose and fell with shallow breaths. I think he heard me, though, because he lifted his head slightly and turned an eye to what I was doing.

I pulled a PokeBall from my pack, touched the button in the middle, which widened it to action mode, and threw the ball with all my might.

The inciter, that button in the middle, hit its target dead on and the PokeBall exploded open. Seviper, now awash with the teleportation energy that launched the world into a new age with its invention, evaporated into a red, ethereal glow and entered the ball. It trembled a few times before issuing a solemn tone, indicating capture.

A smile split my features as I rushed over to retrieve my new Pokemon. Glancing to the brush, I pursed my lips and reached into my bag and released Pudge (now a Pidgeotto) to dissuade my stalkers from attacked.

I told Pudge, who whistled and chirped along with my story, about my encounter until we left the woods.

**Now reader, I tell you all about my life before so you will have a better fundamental understanding of it now. Now, during the war. I want you to know where I came from. I want you to know I wasn't always the soldier I am now. That I was once happy. **

**That I once gave a damn.**


	2. Before: The Middle Days

I kept those four Pokemon for the next year or so. I wasn't in a hurry to catch them all. I did want to learn and study more about the world around me. It's become something of a rite of passage for ten year olds to go on journeys with Pokemon. By the time I turned eleven, I had been all over the four main regions and had even been to Unova once or twice.

There's something about being in touch with nature for so long, learning things about yourself. It makes you grow up. It makes you strong. This is perhaps the best thing I've learned in my travels the two years between turning twelve and ten.

The dark time in our world was over. Decades ago, the creation of Pokemon happened almost by accident. It sparked a large war in which Pokemon were worked like machines of war. Most of the men fought in the war. Most of the men died.

Kanto was the first region to truly give Pokemon a chance again after the war, to treat them as objects of sport and fun rather than symbols of a dark period when the old nations fought against one another. Kanto was the first to give name and credence to Pokemon and to set up a formal gym and League. Many of the regions followed suit after this, but Kanto is recognized as the leading Pokemon destination.

The trend began in Kanto. After the war, so few men were still around. The children of these men, stuck with their mothers at home when the fighting happened in far off places, suddenly became the providers of the house. They were recognized as adults and treated as such when it came to their decision making. That's when the sport of Pokemon battling began.

A trainer gets his own Pokemon and travels the region battling other trainers and capturing more Pokemon. Each battle is rewarded with money gleaned from the losing opponent. That money was usually sent back home for the mother to live off of.

That's why I think it's so hard for the Fiore, Almia, and Oblivia regions to break the main regions of our Pokemon-sport mindset: it's just become so ingrained in our society. It all but _restarted _it.

It made kids grow up, and sometimes when studying the history books, I can see that the war was probably a good thing. Society was technology-obsessive in the days before the war.

No one talked to their neighbors anymore because it was easier to type on a screen. When no one talked to their neighbors, they didn't see them as real people like them. They saw their neighbors as strangers. Strangers can't be trusted.

Gradually, right under their noses, our ancestors became paranoid. When that inventor of Old Japan created the instantaneous matter transferal system, the technology used to regularly in something as silly as a PokeBall nowadays, it became the most coveted piece of technology in the Old World.

The tech got stolen, duplicated numerous times. Tests were conducted. Sometimes these tests were fatal in that all the bugs had not yet been worked out of the new tech. That's how some of the scarier Pokemon got created before it was refined enough for the scientists to realize they could create genetic mutations of animals back then that didn't have to look like a pile of, well, Muk.

Some people believe that Pokemon had always been around, even thousands of years ago, and the genetic gene in them slowly died off until they were unpowered animals.

They say the all-powerful, godly Pokemon Arceus allowed this to happen because humanity needed time to evolve on its own without the assistance of Pokemon. Unfortunately, it evolved so much to the point where it was able to forcible thrust that gene back into the animals of olden days, I suppose.

I don't pretend to know all the answers. There have been findings of Pokemon fossils dating back to the Dark Ages, to the Napoleon Bonaparte days even, and yet according to the history books, Pokemon came into existence not a hundred years ago due to an accidental lab experiment. The same thing has happened in years since with the whole Mewtwo debacle, but that's another story.

I'll stick to my own, sorry to bore you. I have a lot of time to brood nowadays. By regiment tells me that I'm the broodiest person they'd ever met.

I think I just like to remember happier times.

Anyway.

My father, oh that father of mine, he begged me to have at least one fire-type in my party.

"How the hell does the Elite Four _Fire _member's own _son _not have a _fire-type _in his own _party?!_" He would shout at me on more than one occasion, usually when my mom was on her weekly trip to Fiore and he knew I wouldn't have back-up.

My default response was this: "Dad, I've grown up around fire-types my whole _life. _They're always around the house. I don't want one. I want to know what _other _types of Pokemon are like."

To which he would immediately respond, "Well maybe you should have become a Pokemon researcher."

At this point I would look at my PokeBalls in askance, as if debating whether or not I should give up the lifestyle I had chosen. "You know, maybe you're right."

He'd throw up his hands and walk off, taking off his shirt and calling his Infernape to go do training in the backyard of our ridiculous mansion that I never wanted to take my friends to.

"But you live in a _castle_," they'd implore.

"So?" I'd shoot back.

"Don't you love it?"

I hated it, honestly. We lived on a cliff, and on that cliff there was not a single blade of grass. It was the barest patch of land in Sinnoh and my dad loved it. He said he trained better with his fire/fighting-types there.

I've always had a good relationship with my dad's Pokemon. Like pet and owner. I all but grew up with his Cyndaquil, then a Typhlosion by the time I was twelve, and his Infernape has always been almost the older brother I never had. See, but it was _always _fire Pokemon. Well, besides Steelix, but he scared the hell out of me.

I digress.

When I turned twelve, it was time for my Ranger training to begin. A bit early, actually, as most recruits had to go through Academy before being skilled enough to actually go to the islands regions, but hey, you know who my mom is.

My entire ranger training would take about four years, for what would pass as my Academy training would be included with the actual ranger training.

When I was at Fiore the first time, when I just had my Piplup and Pidgey, people didn't view me as a trainer. They viewed me as my mother's son too, yes, but they also saw me as a kind of social experiment. I was literally the embodiment of two cultures becoming one. Could the main and island regions work together, could the two philosophies mesh? That was the million-dollar question, and I was determined to answer it.

A word about my mother: she's the kindest, nicest person you'll ever meet in your whole life, but Lord Jesus help you should have the misfortune to piss her off. Things get ugly and she will never ever forget it.

She has a unique approach to dealing with crime organization like the laughable Go-Rock Team from a few years back: "We protect Pokemon. Not people."

My mother has a third degree black belt in nearly all forms taught in the New World, of which there aren't very many and usually originate around whatever new fighting types a region brings up.

She's been trained by Bruno himself, the Elite Four master of fighting-types. She's taken down Hitmonlees and Hitmonchans in honorable combat and has bested Machokes in wrestling matches.

She gets a manicure every week and she likes to dress up.

You don't wanna mess with my mom.

So when "jack-ass organizations consisting off the reject ass-wipes of society toting nothing more than a Woobat and Poocheyena" come knocking, my mother goes kicking.

She's taken down more members of a single organization with her bare hands than most trainers have with the Pokemon. It's pretty awesome.

So when my mother informed me that she would be overseeing my combat training, I was more than elated. Don't think that just because she's my mom that she didn't put me through hell, though. I can't tell you the sorts of obstacle courses she had Pip and I run.

She even made Seviper unleash a few Poison Tails on me to test my reflexes. "What if it hits me?!" I cried, dodging half-hearted swings from my obviously reluctant Pokemon.

"He won't hit you!" She called back, flying a lock of dirty-blond hair out of her face. She jumped down from her position on the observation stage that oversaw the big-as-a-football-field course and jogged over.

She crouched down by Seviper and put one finger under his chin. Funny thing about my Seviper: he's terribly, debilitating shy of humans other than myself. Oh, he'll take on every single Zangoose in that forest I found him in, but the last thing he would want to do is go up against a human being. I think he has self-consciousness issues. Like he's a serpent and all humans should fear him so he's afraid of being automatically hated for that.

At least that's what I gleaned from him when I stated my theory and he gave me half-nods.

"Listen, Vipes," my mother said as she sometimes called him, "I'm doing this exercise with you because you're Ford's Pokemon. You love Ford. You wouldn't intentionally harm him. Isn't it better that he train with you, when you know that you'll be extra extra careful with him, than with some wild Seviper I got out and find with my Styler to train him with?"

Seviper met her eye, glanced back at him. His skin pigment changed as his confidence surged back into him. He uttered a hiss and the two long fangs that extended a foot and a half out of his mouth glinted.

"Oh no, Mom, what did you do?"

Seviper sissed and hissed and I could've sworn he was laughing as his tail shot out at me.

"Should've left you for the Zangoose!" I teased him as a sweat broke out on my forehead.

I swam laps with Wailmer in the stadium-size pool in Fall City. I jogged with Pudge flying off to my right.

The routines I did over the course of six months honed my body and evaporated any ounce of baby fat I had left on my body.

If my journeys in the main regions was a process of self-discovery, training to be a ranger was a process of discovering the world around me and preparing me for it.

I got my Capture Styler the day I turned thirteen and my mother told me to leave my PokeBalls behind as we went out to Lyra Forest.

My palms itched for the cool reassurance of my PokeBalls as wild Pokeman ran rampant around me, a few not so friendly looking. I'd rather Seviper be slithering along next to me or Pudge gliding above me in case one of these Pokemon decided to attack.

Which, they did.

It was a Combusken and it kicked two fireballs right at me and my mother. Ah, this is where all that physical training came in handy, see? The reflexes and all that.

I don't think it was angry at us for any particular reason. Probably just bored and wanted to have a little fun with the two unguarded humans taking a stroll in the forest.

Glancing at my mother from around a tree and taking cue from her reassuring nod, I stepped forward and raised my right arm and waited for the cheerful ding that indicated Pokemon lock.

I touched my left hand to the top of the device attached to my right forearm and watched as something that resembled a top shot forth and immediately took flight in a circular motion around the Combusken.

The Pokemon, clearly startled, jumped back and tried to swat at the top. I yanked out my Styler and wind-milled the device in the air before me to match that of the top around Combusken.

When the top and Styler were in perfect sync, the Capture Disc closed the circle and the Combusken briefly glowed with an otherworldly light that blinded me for a moment. The next thing I knew, the top was returning to its launched in my arm via homing signal and the Pokemon was standing serenely in the middle of the road.

Breathless, I looked up at my mother, who had tears in her eyes. I grinned at her.

"How was that?"

And thus I became a Rank 1 Ranger. Now I had made a few friends in Fall City and fellow rangers at the ranger base, so when it came time to say good-bye after almost a year of continuous living at the Fiore Region, it was no easy task.

A few of the residents came to see me off, mostly the elders of the city council.

"Ford, we wanted to give you our blessing," they told me. "You have convinced all of us here that your Pokemon are still independent beings even under your command as a trainer. You will do us proud in your regions as a Fiore Ranger."

**Kinda got more serious in this chapter but I hope it was interesting nonetheless. Don't worry, big things right around the corner and the lightheartedness of the first chapter will be back. The reviews mean so so much to me, keep them coming, please! :]**


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